O-TOWN OUTSIDER

FRIENDS!

"Pastry cafe in the heart of danger

Off-off Disney, behind tinted glass in 

This town that's been in the news

For everything but terror…"

This is the beginning of a poem I wrote on Nov 24, 2015 called O-TOWN OUTSIDER. I do not think it's one of my clairvoyant outbursts though. I remember when I wrote it thinking, what could be more horrific than a massacre in a theatre, an elementary school, a church, a concert in Paris? Because I knew that even after Paris there would be no change (here in America) in gun control legislation.

And I came up with Disneyland. Maybe if the Magic Kingdom took a hit we would all wake up. It is not the most original idea. I'm sure Carl Hiassen wrote a book about it in the 90s. But I started a poem about terror in/at/around Disney & then as poems do it became more of a statement on overpopulation and violence and greed. 

Anyway… I have no words yet for what has happened once again in our country. As with every massacre this one has levels of horror that surpass the ones before it. And the quadratic arguments are going round: It was guns! It was mental illness! It was toxic masculinity! It was homophobia! It was terrorism!

It was all of those things. But mostly it was the deadly weapons in the hands of an enraged, unstable, self-loathing homophobe.

After trans issues--and possibly ahead of them--gun violence is my main concern in this world. I have my own stories of gun violence (some of which I recounted in my "manifesto") and I believe that guns need to be removed from our society as a means of self defense. Guns should be for soldiers and law enforcement only. Actually, no guns for soldiers either, or law officers. And oh yes, I mean ALL guns. Handguns to automatic cumblasters. No guns for you! I am the gun nazi! I don't care if you hate it. Come & get me NRA.

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All right. Now that we have that taken care of, here is more stream of consciousness:

When my mind is an ocean I can see alphabets and formulas. Colors and futures. Today there is a swamp in my skull. Sloshing with microbes and alligator teeth. An unseen inbred master holds my chain-of-consciousness so I look for a headline to howl at. To bark my jaws against, only sharpening tone but dulling the sound bite. It's idiom as curious as an opaque surface erupting in bubbles. Hark, who breathes there? Who insists upon life where souls are made of mud? The stream-of-command handed down in rusty brown genetic codes. Green is the only color that disobeys. I am flooded with Floridian blood in this Federal Republic; I abandon femininity in favor of no flavor. Traversing the glade with no weapon but my blissful ignorance. 3-3-16

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How Monday begins with such uncertainty when Sunday finished in first place? The reset that occurs between 3 a.m. and its next-of-clock kin. The Start Over button in the temple gets pushed by moonbeams. Dreams compiled on quicksand assure no default setting becomes the Establishment. How I wake into this week of waiting, my own head a ringing telephone. How I wake without a trial, how I RSVP the host of my modern era. Sorry I can't be there until the end. I have to leave early so my soul can be parsed into unwanted pregnancies. I have to sing like an angel to earn my wage, to win my war on femininity. I wore it well past its freshness date. It expired on my back, all around my bones it wrapped like a lost weekend. It expired on my watch and it can't be reset. There will be no answer, there will be no message left. 3-7-16

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Tepid waters…loosened shark teeth, urchin spikes. Soft mind dragging tender feet along the shoreline. Can we have enthusiasm for a life that will never live up to this exotic metaphor? Our hospital getaways, our cubicle destinations don't ionize our stardust. We rot tooth-first into a green burial. Enough! Enough of this lament--it's so last century and that's where my fossil is buried. The single-boned organism that was me while I was here. After I departed from the stars and landed in my solitary skin cell. I've had some glory here--I've seen candy, I've touched love's private doorknob, I've listened to fingers exploring forbidden sockets. My current sensory overload--you in your carbon cross-legged sentence. Pulling acoustic nerves from my neck…denying my existence while copying its molecules' sequence. The colors I shovel at your goggled pupil, the baby steps you take in retrograde. I would have gay trans man sex w/ you for sure.

3-11-16

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Riots in Chicago. Friday ruptures. Centipede activity. Each segment extending a hand, a prickled leg, from recent history to a future so bloated and slimy--call the coroner. Call the cops to the corner where the first root slithered underground. It's a warehouse full of plants. The skeletal sunflower scientists shout from their tall vantage but the baby's breath never gives up suction. Strangle of the middle class, weeds so mediocre, such bland demographic putting its numbers behind the maybe of its existence. Thrusting its shoulders into fluorescent sun, illuminating a podium where hate speech will be supported, where obscenity will lean like a wounded soldier beside it. I saw you picking cactus very carefully, coercing pansies and petunias with little resistance. I saw you digging up the snapdragons, flamboyant and belligerent. Sure, we'll join your riot. Tell us when to exhale and stand by with socialist hoses. Save your bullets for the Easter bunny. 3-13-16 

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In the telling of my life story there is an echo. Over and over a reverb sensation squeezed through a throat or hallway, choking on the script. The bullshit scripture stapled haphazard, ripped, red pen hatching over the nest of truths I can't say. Truths I bit down on; interior shark attack. Deep tissue message--I am not a willing disciple. I won't play this role; I won't be cast. I will break every bone and barrier. I will live in a different time signature, I will carry myself like a tornado. Through nursery school fire to upper management isolation. Solitary confinement in a soul mate's embrace. A bridge covered in starlit fog, blockading our lift-off. Lifting our carbon corpses from the fuel tank. 3-18-16

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Whats up w/ her?

When my head won't give up its clouds I fill it with anchors. Get down from there I say, it's dangerous. "But I can see everything from here!" it protests. Everything's not yours to see, I tell it. Now sink down to sea level, drain your heart of curiosity, return to this tomb of a body. This is what you signed up for when you volunteered to leave the womb. We gave your soft little cloudhead a squeeze and you agreed--to serve in the karmic forces of the 21st century. There must be profit in misunderstanding. We'll find reasons to bomb McDonalds, we'll make a pinata of the church, a matchstick murder of skyclad moneyscrapers. I steal from the headlines because your wallet is in jail. I steal names and drop them from the radio tower. I steal and steal and steal and no one realizes all the freedom lives in my fist. All the joy is clenched in my throat. 3-24-16

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Good-bye friends. I love you all. Take care of yourselves.